A-Z 2019 My Reflections

Giving feedback is a major part of this experience and has kept this A to Z movement growing all these years. Here are my answers to the questions posed on the A to Z Blog Challenge website.

What did you love about the challenge this year?

As always it’s a great community of bloggers and readers making this event a must for me each year. I loved that so many people were willing to comment on your posts if you visited and commented on theirs.

What would you change about it?

The only thing that was tough was weeding through broken links, duplicate listings, and comment sections that refused to let you just comment.

What was the best moment for you during this year’s challenge?

Having all of my posts scheduled and ready to go on the first week of April felt amazing! It was a challenge to get everything ready but it’s a must in order to have enough time to visit other blogs and respond when people comment on the blog.

What is the best comment your blog got during the challenge, and who left the comment?

I loved seeing returning bloggers visiting my blog this year: Sue Bursztynski from The Great Raven is one of my faves.

Here’s one of my best comments:

“I have not seen Black Panther. The info about Vibranium is totally new to me. Enjoyed reading it. Wakanda seems to be blessed to possess Vibranium. I was unaware of the fact that Captain America’s shield is also made of this. Interesting facts here…”

If I have a blog, I’ll be doing this challenge again. Around February every year, I start to feel discouraged about it, but this challenge keeps me engaged with my readers and gives me a traffic boost at the same time.

Was it well organized and were the hosts helpful? (Did you fill out the after survey?)

Survey? I didn’t see it, but I’ll go look for it right now. I found it very well organized as always. I loved that A to Z is active on FB too giving me another place to share posts with readers and other bloggers.

How did you and your blog grow, change, or improve as a result of this challenge? Did you find new blogs out there to enjoy?

I found several blogs I’d visit again. A few that I wish hadn’t quit the challenge because they had potential.

My Stats:

280 Blogs visited

108 Comments given

My own blog improves each year I do the challenge because I have tons of content and it helps remind me of why I’m blogging in the first place.

Were you on the Master List? (If you did the challenge last year, was it better this time without the daily lists?)

Yes, and yes! The Facebook posts were a nice touch.

Any suggestions for our future?

Please remind people that if they want more commenters to NOT require a log-in or sign-in. It makes it difficult for those of us who have different names for everything. Also, I found that most people found me after I sought them out. I’d love to know how many sites on average people are able to visit during the month. (My stats are above).

Any notes to the co-host team? A word of thanks to Jeremy for all his hard work on the graphics? A picture with your A to Z shirt, if you ordered one?

I loved that the co-hosts came by and visited my blog. It means a lot when they take the time when there’s so many of us. Thanks for that! I couldn’t get a T-shirt this year but Jeremy the graphics are fantastic.

Of course, I wouldn’t go through the trouble of giving feedback and not ask for any myself. Here’s an opportunity. If I can do anything more as a participant in the blogging challenge let me know in the comments below. See you next year!

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8 Comments

Aw, thanks, T.S! Very kind of you to say so. I visited a fair few blogs this year, but didn’t return to the A to Z site after my initial sign up. I’m finding it harder to negotiate than in my first year – and I don’t have Facebook. I would have preferred the chance to update in the comments section.

However, I made some new online friends and revisited others.

I have a Blogger blog, so no real reason to log in, as on WordPress, which drives me nuts. I did open it up to “all” comments and found myself besieged with spam and other ridiculous anonymous comments, sometimes ten a day, so I’ve gone back to Google accounts only. Sorry! I hope you can still comment.

I understand about the spammers. They’ve been persistent here too. I was very late joining Facebook, but I have to admit it has worked for my readers. Don’t worry, I’m just complaining about commenting for the challenge only. It’s great having you around as always!

Thanks for coming by, I really had fun with my theme this year. I’ll admit I didn’t keep track of my stats every year, but it helps me stay accountable. I really love this challenge and I want it to continue. My tip is to make a copy of the Masterlist for myself. Then in a separate column, I keep track of all the sites I visit. I leave notes for myself so I know which ones I’d like to re-visit.

Since you said you were curious: I did not count the number of comments I left this year, but I did track the number of blogs I visited: 510. 🙂

I’m really impressed that you have your posts all written and ready by the first week of April! I work ahead – because I’d never have time to visit other participants if I didn’t! – but not to that extent. I can see how beneficial it would be though. Food for thought for next year! 🙂

Like Debbie, I didn’t knew about the Facebook daily posts! My method for visiting new blogs was following commenters from the main blog (AtoZ), and from all the blogs I visited. And from mine of course ;). Sometimes it was difficult to find people, as they do not add their blog link in their Blogger profile (I have a Blogger blog), nor in their comment.
I’m so ashamed I didn’t visit as many blogs as you did, I visited only 50 blogs, but managed to visit and comment on them nearly daily, It was a busy work time for me, and I’m quite happy to have been able to visit them 😉

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